Hand Pumps and Access To Clean Water
In November 2002, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights asserted that access to clean, safe water goes beyond the classification of water as an economic commodity. The committee stressed the fundamental right of sufficient access to clean water for both domestic and personal use. “The human right to water is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity.” With this in mind, manufacturers of water pumps, like those produced by GOAZ Development in Malaysia, have a wide range of potential customers: governments, non- governmental organizations, women’s groups, community groups and other organizations of various types interested to developing access to groundwater.
However, there is controversy surrounding the sustainability of hand pumps, and the long-term gains from investing in them. A number of difficulties are associated with the use of hand pumps: these include cost, hygiene, maintenance, availability of spare parts, responsibility of upkeep, community involvement, technology, organization and education. Hand pumps, battered by intense use and conditions in rural areas, have often fallen apart. In addition, unobtainable spare parts impede maintenance.
Read more about this topic: Hand Pump
Famous quotes containing the words hand, pumps, access, clean and/or water:
“Wild Bill was indulging in his favorite pastime of a friendly game of cards in the old No. 10 saloon. For the second time in his career, he was sitting with his back to an open door. Jack McCall walked in, shot him through the back of the head, and rushed from the place, only to be captured shortly afterward. Wild Bill’s dead hand held aces and eights, and from that time on this has been known in the West as “the dead man’s hand.””
—State of South Dakota, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“the rusty
Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear
Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands
And gulp from them the dailiness of life.”
—Randall Jarrell (1914–1965)
“Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. One man owns his clothes, and another owns a country.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The only human beings I have thoroughly admired and respected in the world have been those who carried the load of the world with a smile, and who, in the face of anxieties that would have knocked me clean out, never showed a tremor. Such men and women end by owning us, soul and body, and our allegiance can never be shaken. We are only too glad to be owned. Religion is nothing but this.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“Here is no water but only rock”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)